And you can normally travel at any level, but if you're in Limsa, you have to wait until you can access the airship, because the ferry is currently down.

If you started in Ul'dah or Grid you can freely move between those two.

Also, I agree with Tenchi that I'm sure they'll get everything sorted out before launch. The game itself is fine, it's just all the new stuff they're testing-- as he said, they got the data they needed.

FINAL FANTASY XIV ‏@FF_XIV_EN 4mIf you're still unable to log in, we ask that you please wait and try again later as we work to address the issue for remaining characters.Expand Reply Retweet Favorite More FINAL FANTASY XIV ‏@FF_XIV_EN 5mIf you have submitted your World/Character Name on the Error 3102 thread we created, please check to see if you can log in.Expand FINAL FANTASY XIV ‏@FF_XIV_EN 5mWhile recovery is not fully complete, we have been able to address a large number of characters that were affected by error 3102. #FFXIV

I'm not sure how this is incompetence. It's a stress test beta. Every single person who signed up knew (or should have known) that these kinds of things can and do happen. The entire point is to draw out errors like these ones BEFORE launch. This is the very definition of "how things should be going when there is a problem."